


nothing to do today but smile

by rhapsodies



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Physical Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 01:05:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5519762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhapsodies/pseuds/rhapsodies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Turns out that Finn needs some help with getting back on his feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing to do today but smile

**Author's Note:**

> Suspend your beliefs. All of them. Obviously the Resistance would have a physio, but that wouldn't be as awesome as getting Poe to do it.
> 
> Title from Simon and Garfunkel.
> 
> I haven't even read this over, so all mistakes are mine.

FN-2187 wakes up.

The throb of pain is sudden, and overwhelming, a line of heat down his back, and when he tries to move his legs, they refuse him. He tries to remember what happened, casting about inside his mind for memories; there’d been a fight. He can’t remember who he was fighting, or even what side he was on, but it sure feels like he lost.

He can feel bones ache, even beneath the fiery hurt, and Finn feels sort of like he’s floating. Like he’s been pushed out of the _Finalizer_ and into unknown space.

He thinks he tries calling out, just for anyone, but he blacks out again instead.

* * *

He wakes up again, to a relentless, thrumming bleeping and bright atmospheric lighting. This time, the burn down his body is dimmed and the stiff ache of his limbs is worse than ever. His mouth is dry, drier even than it was after walking for hours on the dunes of Jakku.

His mind offers up memories: he’d found Rey, and then Ren had found _them,_ in the snow _._ Finn thinks maybe he fought him. It sounds like a damn stupid thing to have done, so he probably did. It hurts, a death-squeeze on his brain, to think too fast.

Then his eyes adjust to the artificial daylight, and he hears a strong voice-

“ _Kriff,_ Finn. I thought you weren’t ever going to wake up,” says Poe, and Finn turns his face towards him as fast as he’s able. His face is littered with fading cuts, and there’s one small bruise on his cheekbone. Poe looks smaller, out of his lumpy pilot’s uniform. (And better, too, if Finn’s honest).

“Whe...” Finn starts, and coughs rustily. His voice is a thin croak, like he quit speaking for too long, like he hasn’t drunk in years. “How long?”

“A couple of weeks,” Poe says, before a swarm of medidroids begin to muscle him out of the sickbay. “Ren really did a number on you, Finn.”

Finn wants to say something in reply, _yeah, no shit, Dameron,_ but his parched throat scrapes like old metal. Before he can even ask what happened to Rey –Stars, he should’ve asked that first off– or whether his foolish fucking plan to _blow up an entire planet_ even worked,  a medidroid advances on him with a syringe, murmuring something in robo-talk that Finn doesn’t understand, and pulls him under again.

* * *

Finn wakes up, and apparently it’s a miracle.

That’s the word the General uses, when she comes to him personally to thank him for his work in exploding Starkiller Base. Finn says, “No problem,” even though, sure, he helped blow the First Order’s greatest weapon, but he also let her husband die.

Rey fought off Kylo Ren where he couldn’t. As it turns out, she’s more than just a hardass with a talent for piloting; she’s force-sensitive enough to take Ren head-on, and now she’s on a mission to bring back a living legend and save the fucking galaxy.

So that lands him back on D’Qar, waiting to be fixed up properly, and completely unsurprised to have the belated realisation that it was him that needed her, not the other way around.

After he wakes up, and wakes up _properly,_ no more slipping into comas, the medidroids inform him that while he’ll regain full use of his body eventually, it’ll take weeks, maybe months of therapy before he can walk right again. “Hell,” Finn says, and sighs heavily.

Miracle. Yeah.

Which means when, after days of lying uselessly in bed like a rusted tool, Finn's stomach twists in surprise to see Poe, who should be off somewhere, doing whatever the best pilot in the Resistance does when he’s not, y’know, piloting.

“Poe?” Finn asks curiously. He’d kill a guy to be able to sit up right now.

Poe grins slightly, and shrugs. “The Resistance doesn’t have a proper physio for you, buddy,” he says easily. “So you get me instead. They think a familiar face might help you “to adjust”.” Gods, Poe even makes the quotation marks with his fingers. Finn is so fucked.

“So I just get some clown hotshot in charge of my recovery?” Finn asks, and laughs when Poe flips him off. “I’m a _big deal_ in the Resistance, you know, Dameron. I don’t know if you understand what an honour this is for you.”

Poe smiles crookedly. “Go ahead and prove it, Finn,” he says.

They start with basic stretches on Finn’s legs that hurt like a bitch, but not as bad as the sting of the freshly-knitted baby skin on his back does when he rubs against the coarse bedsheets the wrong way. Finn clutches the sleeve of his (or is it still Poe’s?) jacket tight in his fist, and curses out a blue streak that would’ve made a freighter pilot in the outer-rim blush; it _does_ set off BB-8 in a frenzy of beeping that carries on for forty seconds.

“You’re upsetting my droid, man,” Poe tells him, but he quits bending Finn’s legs, thank the Force.

Finn rolls his eyes, but what the hell, clearly the Poe is playing favourites.

“Best _bastard_ in the Resistance,” Finn huffs, settling back against the flat pillows.

“I heard that,” Poe tells him, cheerfully, and hooks Finn up to some buzzers that’ll supposedly suck the pain right out of him. It doesn’t work, the asshole.

* * *

After weeks of being trapped in medbay, the docs decide Finn’s well enough to discharge, thanks to overcrowding and the ever-growing demand for more medbeds. They give him a small room that doesn’t feel too cramped, considering the only thing he owns is a jacket that’s not even his. There’s a long burn down it now, too, the leather blackened around the rip.

It feels strange, being a proper part of the Resistance. Finn’s never belonged anywhere before, other than his unit, and there he only belonged as part of a larger, living weapon. The First Order’s breathing machine of soldiers.

He paces around his room for a while, and makes his way over to the door with a half-baked idea of seeing Poe in his brain, before his legs give out under him and he has to claw his way to his bunk.

It’s a miracle, he tells himself firmly. The medidroids said no one should’ve survived that blow.

Finn’s glad. He’s started to enjoy living.

* * *

Finn’s not sure that anything that Poe does to him is actually legal. Poe’s ideas on physiotherapy are all mashed together from his squadron, who’ve all had _different_ therapists using different techniques.

“This isn’t therapy,” he wheezes, flat on his back and sweating through his shirt, “this is kriffing torture.”

The electrodes that Poe strapped to his legs send another round of shocks through his body that leave him exhausted and breathless. A Wroonian chick recommended this method, says it worked wonders on her father; never has a person been so goddamn wrong.

“It’s not supposed to be _easy._ ”

Finn grits his teeth, and snaps, “That’s fine for _you_ to say.”

It’s not even that Finn hates the physio; he hates that it makes him look like this, helpless as a baby nerf, and that Poe’s the one who sees it. More than that, he wants to improve faster, so when the _Falcon_ gets back he can hobble out to Rey without needing support.

“Kriff,” Poe says blithely, after Finn curses out in all the languages that the First Order ever taught him. And then, since Poe’s a dick, he adds, “Next time you’re feeling bad, you might wanna try being less insulting to my mother.”

“I didn’t ask your opinion, Poe,” Finn says, and groans loudly when Poe grips Finn’s leg and gradually pushes the knee up towards Finn’s chest. Finn didn’t think he’d ever hurt as bad as getting a lightsabre raked along his back but clearly someone wants to prove just how wrong he can be. This is only the sixth stretch of _one_ leg, and after that the aching will keep him awake for hours after.

“Think of it this way,” Poe says. There are spots of colour on each cheek, highlighting the smudge of faded bruising. “Once we get done with stretches, we can start walking.”

Finn’s whole body shudders as sweat drips into his eyes. “Trust me, Poe, I will walk as far away from this as possible.”

“You wound me,” Poe says, and winks salaciously, as if he doesn’t realise he’s driving Finn out of his mind.

* * *

It only takes a few sessions before Poe cracks under Finn’s insistent pressure, and stays after the workouts for a few hours. There’s no one else to come visit Finn, anyway, since his only other friend is finding the galaxy’s last Jedi, or whatever the hell.

One day Poe brings with him some Corellian brandy that goes down hard on Finn’s head. Poe is rambling, some story from when he was a kid about this one time that Luke Skywalker (or, _that asshole,_ as Finn calls him, only he can’t tell if that’s remnants of the First Order’s conditioning or a reflex from his irrational jealousy that Skywalker took his only friend from him) gave him a magic twig that’s now a magic tree back on Yavin 4.

“What was it like,” Finn asks. He doesn’t look away when Poe’s eyes catch his, like he usually does.

“What was what like?”

“You know,” Finn says, waving his hand and accidentally thwacking Poe in the chest. “Having a family.”

Poe’s eyes soften, and Finn feels like he should cover his mouth, maybe, before anything else spills out. Only Poe just straightens back against the wall, his hand resting heavy on Finn’s shoulder and Finn’s (?) jacket, and starts talking again, about the house his parents had there and the places he used to play as a kid.

Right. As if Finn could forget. He’s so, monumentally, completely screwed.

* * *

The first time Finn leaves his quarters for somewhere that isn’t the training centre or the mess hall, Poe takes him to command to talk with General Organa.

And somehow, General Organa looks at him and he just feels reverence, blended with some regret. She’s still fearsome, in her own way, even though Finn is maybe twice her size.

He tells her everything he knows of how the First Order works (which isn’t a lot) and what he can predict of their next move (which is even less).

Finn can’t even imagine what it must be like to raise a kid like Ren. Honestly, he can’t even think of the bastard as someone’s son, not with the twisted burns down his back.

There’s a little of what he was scared of; some of the people stare at him because they know he had a hand in blowing Starkiller into chunks, and only a small few of them stare because he’s a reforming stormtrooper, and really most of them stare because he’s got his arms wrapped around Poe Dameron.

And suddenly he’s not just a useful asset anymore, but he’s tied up in this fucking incredible guy who’s forcing Finn to walk again, and drinks with him on Tuesdays, and Finn _wants._

* * *

Poe misses one of the sessions running reconnaissance in the Raxus system.

Finn can’t sleep, and it’s fucking _stupid,_ Poe’s messing with his head even when he’s not here, so he’s awake when the squadron of X-Wings returns, and when Poe knocks softly on Finn’s door, Finn presses him up against the wall and kisses him hard and long.

“Hell, _Finn,_ ” Poe says, and grabs at Finn’s shirt just as Finn starts to step back, tracing his thumb over Finn’s neck. “I thought you were never gonna do anything.”

Finn shivers. “You bastard,” he says hoarsely. “I was waiting on _you._ You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.”

“I think I do,” Poe murmurs, kissing the corner of Finn’s mouth, and pushes Finn away from the wall and sends them both crashing on to Finn’s tiny bunk. Finn pulls at Poe’s shoulders, biting in with his fingernails, and Poe slips between the cradle of Finn’s thighs with a groan in some language that Finn doesn’t know. “Fuck,” Finn whispers, his hips rolling up, and kisses Poe sloppily.

It must be awful, for Poe; it’s not like sex was ever high on the First Order’s agenda of things to teach their soldiers. But Poe keeps kissing him back, all expert-like, and he makes the softest, most desperate noises that go straight to Finn’s dick, and he moans when Finn drags his teeth down Poe’s jaw. It’s different than he thought it would be, because it’s _Poe,_ and he knows him, and Finn’s whole body feels like it’s on fire.

And then Poe backs up, leaving Finn arching up against the empty air. “What,” he begins, before Poe’s roughened, calloused fingers play with Finn’s waistband before shoving them down and tracing the length of Finn’s cock. Finn _arches,_ and then he moans something crazy and embarrassing, before shooting all over his regulation shirt.

“Stars,” Finn gasps, tugging and Poe so he can kiss him again, revelling in the feel of Poe’s hair in his hands and his hot, heavy breathing. “Come on,” he says, “come on,” and gets his hand around Poe, pushing down his pants, and neither of them lasted long, not at all. When he comes, Poe collapses on to Finn with a groan and kisses him messily on the neck.

Once his breathing calms down enough for him to _think_ straight, Finn says, “We waited way too long to do that, man.”

“Didn’t want to rush you,” Poe says into Finn’s shoulder. “Maybe I should’ve planned a seduction.”

They do it all over again later, fucking up the new sheets Finn had to get.

“This really-” Finn gasps out, between kisses. Poe crawls down Finn’s body, and rakes his teeth gently over Finn’s sternum, "-isn’t what the docs wanted for my recovery.”

“You like it better, anyway,” Poe says, and shuts him up pretty effectively with his clever mouth.

* * *

Physio is still an absolute _bitch_ and Finn hates it, hates it because after all this work, he still can’t walk further than as far as he knows he should be able to, before he’s falling down.

And even aside from the physio work, he’s gotta check back in with at medbay each day for tests and to stock up on meds that make him feel dreamy. The docs there hustle him about like a child (which he never has been, since the First Order conditions that away) and congratulate him on living, like he did some cool trick.

But when the _Millenium Falcon_ docks back at D’Qar, Finn rushes out to the ship before he even realises he was moving. He has to lean on Rey to make it back to the base, which does nothing for his ego.

She says he’s an idiot, and that he could’ve gotten himself killed.

“Welcome back,” Finn says. She grins, and kisses him gently on the check.

* * *

“So,” Rey says. She’s sat in the chair ( _Poe’s chair,_ his mind suggests traitorously, which means he really needs to get a grip on his life) by his bunk in medbay. She’s taking time out from her training with Skywalker (to become a _Jedi,_ Stars, how'd it ever work out that Finn runs with a Jedi now?) to come harass him during his daily medical, since Poe’s squadron is out on a mission.

 “I hear you’ve been doing physio with the Resistance’s darling.”

These fucking medidroids have no moral code. Finn’s gonna blast them.

“Have you now,” he replies, but he can feel his cheeks heating up, which definitely wasn’t part of the plan.

Rey snorts. “He’s cute,” she tells him, and nudges him with her boot. “And he’s going to arrive back in a couple.”

“I’m not gonna ask how you know that,” Finn says, and squints against the bright lighting above his bed, before getting an eyeful of Rey’s smug, grinning face.

“Go get your boy,” she says, switching off her holo and offering her hand.

Finn grins, shrugging his jacket on. “He’s not my boy,” he says, except he kind of is.

He walks the whole way there.


End file.
